I am new, what hardware do I need?

Hello everyone,
I’m new here today and am thinking about setting up ipfire on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.
Now I’m wondering what additional hardware I need in addition to the Raspberry.
As I understand it, I need the following:

  1. at least one USB network adapter like the RTL8153 is separate USB-to-Ethernet adapter
  2. power supply
  3. SD card
  4. a case for the Raspberry

Hello, welcome to the community.

Your list contains in the first 3 topics the basics.

  1. an internet gateway needs 2 interfaces, at least. If the board owns 1 NIC only, you need a second NIC based on converter ( usually USB ↔ ethernet )
  2. computers need power, Raspis a special power supply ( powering via GPIO is also possible )
  3. the OS and its data have to be stored somewhere, Raspis use a SD card.

topic 4. isn’t necessary, but highly recommend because of dust :wink:

What I would recommend is getting a powered hub for the ethernet adaptors if you are going that route in building one.

I decided not to go that route since the 4th gen Xeon router boards are cheap on ebay and server recylers like the server store. It cost $60 for the motherboard on ebay, plus another $70 for a 40W processor. I also bought a complete 1U at the server store with the stock 80W that has a hotswap bay with 8Gb ram for $175 after delivery. I kind of consider it a wash with running the 40W processor because the power draw is marginally similar at the same speeds and I have 10Gb networking capability which the Pi4 would struggle on that.

Modern intel router boards are around $750 with processor if you want a current commercial solution. Which would be around a normal desktop computer build price (~$1100) at the end after a power supply and case, etc. is assembled.

You will need a keyboard and monitor to do the initial setup.

The USB to Ethernet adapter should be USB 3.0 capable and plugged into one of the USB 3.0 (blue) ports on the Raspberry Pi.

If you want to build a headless image to boot, check out FireMyPi on github. There are also some hardware recommendations there in the admin guide.

Regards,
Stephen

Thank you very much for your answers,
Now I know what hardware I need to get.
Until then I’ll have a look at the system/ipfire in a VM and test it.

Thank you
Sven-Markus